About a week ago I noticed after my PC was idle for perhaps and hour I could no longer access the Internet or email. When this happens I have to reboot my PC to regain Internet access.

I have Windows XP MCE and I use a cable modem for the internet. It appears there's nothing wrong with the modem. When I lose access I tried rebooting the modem- that didn't do anything. Also, all the lights on the modem look normal even after I lose Internet access.

Could this be some kind of virus or spyware issue? My virus software PC-cillen has not detected anyting. I haven't installed anything new on the PC related to the internet. I did install a few screen video capture programs recently which I will be uninstalling now.

This has happened to me aswell, and rebooting the computer was the only solution i have found. The only thing that i could come up with is that my computer was attacked and my security software was "autoblocking" communications. However, if that was the case, i believe it should only block the attacking IP address(s).

I went ahead and unchecked all "standby" settings on my NIC. I also did a system restore going back before the problem started.

The problem appears to be gone now. I suspect it was the system restore that solved the problem because I can't see what could have caused a NIC setting to change and therefore be the cause of the problem.